A number of studies have examined everyday problem solving with a neo-Piagetian approach to cognitive development in adulthood (Labouvie-Vief, 1992). According to this paradigm, in middle and late adulthood, the formal operational reasoning of late adolescents and young adults, with its focus on logic, is replaced by more sophisticated mental structures distinguished by relativistic reasoning based on synthesizing the irrational, emotive, and personal. Specifically, Blanchard-Fields (1986, 1994; Blanchard-Fields, and Norris, 1994) stated that, when dealing with social dilemmas, older adults are superior to younger adults in their integrative attributional reasoning (i.e., reasoning based on the integration of dispositional and situational components).

To conclude, there is reason to believe that the developmental trajectories of skills utilized to solve strictly academic problems do not coincide with the trajectories of skills used to solve problems of a practical nature.

1.2 What develops in practical cognition?

The evidence supporting the supposition that practical cognition has a different developmental trajectory than academic cognition supports the etiological independence (not necessarily complete) of practical and academic skills but is only one of many research advances revealing the developmental mechanisms of practical cognition. Developmental research on practical skills is still in its early stages. However, data available at this point shed some light on what Sinnott (1989) called the chaotically complexreality of practical problem solving; evidence supports the existence of different developmental trajectories (maintenance, improvement, and decline) across the life span without a pronounced preference for any single one.

There is no formal theory of the stages of the development of practical cognition (Berg, 1994). Some results, however, suggest that the difference in performance on practical and analytical tasks is observed rather early. Freeman, Lewis, and Doherty (1991) have shown that the performance of preschoolers on the false-belief tasks (e.g., tasks involving the formation of false beliefs and expecting children to determine and overcome their false nature) is better if they are asked to act out answers rather than to give them verbally. The researchers suggest that the reason for this discrepancy is that early implementation of a theory of intentionality is "only" practical. In other words, preschool children are able to distinguish between true and false expectations and true and false causes, but do it by carrying out practical actions (e.g., acting with the right object) rather than by explaining why those particular objects should be chosen. These and other findings contribute to the hypothesis that reflective awareness and verbalization emerge gradually from the implicit practical cognition organizations which are their necessary precursors (e.g., Bickhard, 1978; Karmiloff-Smith, 1988).

Developmental research on practical cognition is moving in a number of directions, each of which might help us to detect the internal mechanisms of its development. Most of the work is centered on specific characteristics of practical tasks. The assumption here is that if we understand the differences in the ways these tasks are formulated and solved at different stages of development, we will be closer to understanding the developmental dynamics of practical cognition. Drawing on the distinction made earlier between academic and practical tasks suggests five main directions of research: (1) studies of developmentally variable contexts of practical problem solving; (2) studies of developmental changes in the content of practical problems encountered at different stages of development; (3) studies of the developmental diversity of the goals of practical problem solving; (4) studies of differential strategies utilized in practical problem solving at different periods of development; and (5) studies on developmental variation in problem interpretation and definition.